


i had a golden throne

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Relationship Study, o wow not happy tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 19:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11469945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: Sinbad looks at him with something on his face that Judal Does Not Like. He lets him stay longer that night, only shoos him out with threats of getting Ja’far to do it for him well into the night. He also thinks maybe he dreamed that one up, because Sin had also let him drape himself over his shoulders while he worked and lounge on his big fancy bed and eat his food. He never can tell, with Sinbad.or: they first come to him when he is young





	i had a golden throne

**Author's Note:**

> me? briefly hyperfixating on smth i haven't focused on in like 2 years? absolutely
> 
> anyways blease do read the tags, and i love this boy v much and i hope he's out of space by now bc i havent read a single chapter in over a year

They first come to him when he is young. Fourteen, probably. Sometime near his birthday. 

The thing is, he can never remember if it was just one of them, or maybe two; the anonymity of those stupid veils looking down at him makes it all blur together. They could all be the exact same person underneath—they could all be something not even human, and he would never know. 

Their hands feel very human; he always remembers their hands, because they scratched and pulled at his robes and his hair and every other part of him they could reach. Their faces don’t matter when their hands are all he knows.

And it first happens when he’s fourteen, vaguely rebellious in that natural way because he’s tired of being stuck here all the time and he doesn’t wanna train everyday when he could be doing things like sleeping or having Kougyoku teach him how to paint his eyes better. 

He’s young enough that he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him but old enough to understand what it means, that it’s something bad and soul-deep and will never ever be washed away. Afterwards he is still and terrified; he thinks he went somewhere else in the middle of it, floated right out of his body and up through the ceiling where the stars shone down and he didn’t have to think about a thing.

Gyokuen tells him that it had to happen. She never says the word punishment but he can hear it in the way her hands run through his hair too quickly and catch on the messy knots, jerking his head back. 

 

They put the jewelry on him when he was twelve, give or take. Thirteen? Ten? He can never remember. It had burned, even though they said they were gifts. 

They’d started conversion rituals even sooner than that—he remembers the first time, and he always always wonders if it had been better or worse to be unaware of what was going to happen to him. At first he would always wake up afterwards wrapped in Falan’s arms, hand on his sweat-slicked forehead, and she would help with the pounding in his head and murmur quiet little things and her eyes would crinkle softly at the corners.

(She had told him once that she had lost someone very important to her, and that was why she was part of the Organization—and she said she was training him as well as she could because she didn’t want the same thing to happen to him so would he please try harder and always keep his guard up because he was small back then and small things never lasted long in this world.)

The jewelry had stung something awful, digging into his skin—he thought he must be bruised and branded but he would never know because they never came off because there were no clasps, they had sealed them together with magic and that was final. They were gifts and gifts shouldn’t be taken for granted, she said, especially when they were as lovely as this. (They never did tell him who the gifts were from.)

And the rituals were never fun either, something reaching inside him and tearing things out a little at a time and shoving things back in. Falan stopped crinkling her eyes and bringing him water after a while and he always hurt so so much.

This is worse. Leaves him aching in places he didn’t even know you could ache. He is high in status, and he knows about brothels and mistresses, used to swing his feet over the roof and listen to the palace gossip, who was bedding who and who was getting caught with whoever else. He would lick his sticky fingers clean of the peaches he’d been eating and wonder if everyone in the palace was stupid enough to not lock their doors. If you were having an affair, you should at least have that much sense. Servants have always been nosy. 

The point is he knows about things but now he _knows_ and he wonders why anyone would ever choose to do something like this. He never wants anyone to touch him ever again. Gyokuen always runs her hands through his hair and it makes him want to throw up.

So they come to him in the dead of night at fourteen; he knows there are girls who are married off years before this, and wonders if this is how they feel, torn up and shaking. They don’t stop coming after that. It is not often, but it is frequent enough to keep him In Line. 

He’s glad none of the princes ever show up; if anyone knows, they never say anything. Kougyoku used to rub at his bruises like she could massage them away, because sometimes he would slip into her room and complain about difficult training and she’s always been one of the nicer siblings—the two of them made a funny team when they were younger, and she would always braid his hair for him when he didn’t want to do it himself. He used to listen to her talk to imaginary people back before he raised a dungeon for her; she would laugh with them and play pretend so well sometimes he wondered if there was actually someone in there with her. Whenever he peeked through the window, she was alone. 

Sometimes he would talk to the Rukh the same way—they liked to sing to him, and they always buzzed around and they loved him more than anyone did, they told him so all the time. They always buzzed around Sinbad, too, all bright and happy. They liked him a lot; he burned bright the way most people do only in small bursts. 

He’d seen him first when he was young and the Rukh had soared, told him _that’s the one, he’s the one_ , and then again and again and he said no every time and Judal never did understand why, when he was younger. He was a Magi, and everyone wanted to be a king to a Magi. 

Sinbad became a king to his own new country; Judal heard and watched and wanted. 

They first come when he’s fourteen and then they come again and again and he always wonders, sometimes, when he’s floating up through the ceiling, if Sinbad is like this with everyone he takes to bed all the time. He can picture it: his hands are big, so it would be easy for him to take a fistful of someone’s hair and yank their head back.

He thinks he maybe asks about it once, when he wanders into Sindria just to see if he could do it two times in one month. Goes: why do women like it so much if it hurts them all the time? 

And Sinbad looks at him with something on his face that Judal Does Not Like. He lets him stay longer that night, only shoos him out with threats of getting Ja’far to do it for him well into the night. He also thinks maybe he dreamed that one up, because Sin had also let him drape himself over his shoulders while he worked and lounge on his big fancy bed and eat his food. He never can tell, with Sinbad.

 

The thing is that when he finally falls over the edge, he falls far and fast—it’s been a solid process over the years, probably, pushing him closer and closer until he just fucking _plummets_. He plummets hard. It’s so easy. 

The thing about white Rukh is that they’re always buzzing, flitting around so much sometimes he can’t sleep because of it, but it’s a soft kind of noise; the black Rukh are loud. He thinks it’s because of what they’re made of. 

There’s always something crying or yelling or hating; it fills him up and keeps him going but it’s always just. So Much. 

When he’s flying, when he’s on top of the fucking world and crushing everything else, it’s like it’s finally _quiet_. 

His head is clear. He knows what the fuck he’s doing and maybe he doesn’t always know why he’s doing it, reasons slip his mind sometimes in the heat of things because what does it matter as long as it’s fun, right? These are his favorite times; his best moments. There’s no one pulling his hair or ripping him up because he’s the one doing the ripping. 

At some point, he sees Sinbad and his Rukh are all fucked up. He’s seen the signs of someone right on the edge of depravity, seen people all torn up, sees how Hakuryuu got all burned and bent up after The Fire and how he’s so angry all the time now. But this is something different. Sin’s always been something different. 

He tells him this too, he thinks, elbows propped up on the other side of the idiot’s desk. Says: they don’t like you as much as they used to.

“Who, your organization?”

“No, stupid, the Rukh. They don’t sing around you like they used to. It’s ‘cause you’re all screwed up, right…” he reaches out, jabs two fingers lightly into the king’s chest, right where his heart would be, beating beneath him, “there,” and pulls his hand back before Sinbad can slap it away.

“You would know about that, wouldn’t you,” he says instead of taking the bait.

“Yeah,” Judal agrees with a smile stretched wide, “I would.”

 

They never do stop coming, and the rituals never really stop either, even after he falls. He raises dungeons for them and for Kou and he makes a name for himself, High Priest of the Kou Empire. They put him on a pedestal to show off to the world and bow to him and fetch him peaches when he’s too lazy to get pick some himself. 

They say he is their Saving Grace and Greatest Asset; they come in the night and pull his hair and claw at him until he is nothing but an open nerve. There are sliced scars on the inside of his thighs; he has beautiful robes he wears to parties or ceremonies, lots of draped silks and sleeves that brush the very ends of his fingertips, and everyone says he looks stunning. Sinbad hates him; Sinbad gets real drunk in his room one night and says that Judal’s hair is very soft and that he should wear more red because red is definitely his color. 

He wears long pants because, when he looks at his legs in the water after he’s drawn a scalding bath and scrubbed at his skin until it's rubbed bright pink and raw, he thinks they’re kind of ugly, and decides he’ll never ever wear red. 

 

They keep him In Line until that little fuck of a Magi shows him things he had never even dreamed of wanting to see, all fire and yelling and the very cold understanding that he is not supposed to be this way. He could have been something better than this, and he thinks that’s really fucking cruel.

 

When he is very young, Gyokuen takes him outside the palace walls and spreads a blanket on the grass under a tree and tells him about the Rukh. 

She’s the only one who can truly understand him, she says, and it’s their duty to shape the world, the two of them together. She runs her hands through his hair the way he’s seen her run her hands through a few of her children’s. It makes him feels safe, and special. 

Her Rukh are different from his, inky black. He asks her why, and she tells him his will look the same, soon enough. Goes: we’ll help you reach your full potential, show you the true, honest order of things. 

“Will I be stronger?” he asks, because power is all he ever hears people talk about, “Like you?”

“Do you want to be strong like me?” honey-sweet and gentle.

“Yeah,” he nods, and she smiles at him and pats his head and says that of course he does, he’ll be just like her someday. 

 

They first come when he’s fourteen and they never really stop. He can never remember if it was one or two people, the way he can never remember why he starts fights, can never remember how old he was when they started the rituals, can never remember what damn day it is sometimes. 

Depravity is so messy, is the thing, and it’s so calm. 

A man slips out of his room, quiet like a breeze. This one had been quiet; he likes the quieter ones better. They don’t say nasty things that belong in the back rooms of brothels or make sounds that make him want to die. The quiet ones are always quick and clinical about it. It’s faster. 

He’s too exhausted to scrub himself clean this time. He thinks that no matter how many baths he takes, he will never be clean.

He sighs, rolling onto his side so he doesn’t have to stare at the ceiling anymore, and wonders if he can go raise another dungeon or some shit anytime soon. He hasn’t done anything fun in ages.

Vaguely, he wonders how quickly he can make the trip to Sindria if he flies twice as fast as usual. 

**Author's Note:**

> a comment can save a life my man


End file.
